


So Comes The Snow

by Readeity



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: BAMF oc, Badass Desert Child, Death, Dystopia, F/M, Folklore, Gen, I Have No Real Idea Where This Is Going, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kinda Dark, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Second Person, Reincarnation, Tags Are Hard, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-08-04 00:04:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16335914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Readeity/pseuds/Readeity
Summary: You're born to ice and snow.[You are born to sand and heat.]There are raids, of course, but for the most part your small tribe is left alone.[They come for water and cut down those that are in their path.]Your story starts on a glacier.[Your story starts in the desert.]You wonder how it will end.[You know how it ends.]





	1. 0:1

**Author's Note:**

> Yo, I have no idea where I'm going with this. 
> 
> Avatar: The Last Airbender. Man, that show was my shit as a kid and I've been in the mood for it lately. 
> 
> I have VERY vague ideas but I haven't ironed anything out, not like I did with SOS before I posted that. [Speaking of, this is a similar concept, if different in plot.] 
> 
> Reincarnation is my jam, man. Such an interesting concept. I'm not sure how I'm going to lay it out in this one - if it will be full knowledge from the beginning or what.
> 
> The tags are REALLY SPARSE. I mean it when I say I have no real idea where I'm going with this. I'll update them as I go, promise.
> 
> This won't be updated as regularly as I'm going for with Spine, but I hope to flesh it out a bit more soon. 
> 
> This is going to be darker than the TV show. The character is dark and jaded. Let me know if you have any ideas, questions, concerns, etc. about this story!

You are born to the sands of the desert.

 

It is not a soft place; men come for the water of the oasis with swords and knives and bows. You are born to a war-ravaged mother who bleeds out on the tundra, lifeless and her hold lax as she slips away. Your uncle takes you in, a gruff man for all that he is kind, and lets you sleep on a small mat in the small rock hut he had built for his wife.

 

His wife is gone, now. Yet another casualty in the endless fight for water.

 

He fights for the oasis and defends the hearth and when you are four he teaches you how to wield his smallest dagger.

 

He mutters to himself, as he wraps your small fingers around the handle, that it isn’t a woman’s job to fight.

 

That may be true. You have no way to know.

 

He says it isn’t a girl’s place to fight, but he teaches you how to do it regardless, training you with knives before he trains you with a sword before he trains you with a bow. He gives you what you must learn if you wish to survive.

 

You don’t think to thank him for it before he is killed when you are fourteen. Those wanting to claim the oasis come in the night, attack your small settlement. Your uncle fights, defends, of course, but that doesn’t stop them. They take him down and drag him into the hut, the one he built for his wife, and they hold you down and they take his head off in front of you.

 

+

 

His blood has long since dried by the time they leave.

 

+

 

You are fifteen and the desert is in your bones. You are still and you are quiet.

 

The winds howl and the sands stir and if someone isn’t smart enough to seek shelter in the storm, all they leave are bones.

 

+

 

You lose your eye when you’re seventeen. You recognize him, the man who held you down, who turned your face to your uncle and kept it there as he and his friends slowly decapitated him.

 

You lose an eye.

 

He loses his life.

 

+


	2. 0:2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I wrote up another chapter of this faster than I thought I would and decided to just go ahead and post it.  
> This doesn't have a schedule and likely never will. I'll post when I think I've got something.
> 
> Apparently, the plural is oasis is oases. The More You Know.
> 
> Let me know what you think! Questions, comments, concerns, _requests._ If you don't want to comment [Commenting can be scary, I know.], then you can find me on Tumblr [here ](https://www.readeity.tumblr.com) and message me or send me an ask or submit something - whatever you want. I also have an email address - readeity@gmail.com - if you wanna talk to me that way.
> 
> I honestly love interacting with people, even if I'm too shy to say anything first, so don't worry about bothering me.
> 
> See you guys next time! 
> 
> -R

It’s hard, after that.

 

You nearly die seventeen times before you begin to adjust to the void on your right side, to how you have to lean into hearing and touch and smell to detect enemies now.

 

A large scar mars your face, but that isn’t as important as the way you stumble where before you were sure-footed, how you can no longer aim a bow, how you can’t throw your daggers.

 

It takes three months before you find some way to adjust and you have more scars than ever.

 

But you _do_ adjust.

 

+

 

Depth perception. Something you’d never thought about, really, until you have to compensate for its loss.

 

Your neck aches now, because you have to keep your head moving, turning. Light burns sometimes, as it glares off the white sands of your desert and you can barely stand to look at it when before you thought it something beautiful. Your eye aches too, the working one, strained from its constant darting about. You find yourself glaring unintentionally and you discover that you have a new-found need to keep yourself constantly in control.

 

The scar over your lost eye aches and groans in pain.

 

It’s a large, thing, curving along your forehead before cutting through the inner middle of your right eye, cutting through the swell of your cheek and bisecting the dimple that used to pop up when you smiled.

 

The man had tried to cleave your head in two. You’re _lucky_. You try not to think of yourself as such, try to think of it as skill instead, but you know that it isn’t true. It wasn’t skill that made you pull your head back from his sword. It was _luck._

 

You try not to think about it.

 

+

 

The scar is ugly, you suppose. You don’t really know.

 

You have little time for things like aesthetics when you are busy trying not to die. You admire weaponry, you suppose. Shining silver swords and knives of dark metal. Precisely carved bows with glyphs running along the belly, alongside the grip. Those are pretty, you think, but you have no time for thinking of your own face and if others will find it attractive. Perhaps if there was more water, perhaps if there was no war for water, perhaps if you were not a child of the desert down to your very _bones_ -

 

But you are.

 

+

 

There were other oases, once. Your uncle used to tell you of them, of how the four Great Oases came to be. How the Desert Mother lost her only son to the water of the rain and chased it away, leaving only the sun and the sand and those clever enough to survive behind. _Her tears were so great,_ your uncle told you, voice low and secretive among the sands, _that they flooded the dunes._ Havoc became the desert for years, only the most cunning able to survive. But the Desert Mother came out of her grief for a brief moment and saw clearly what she had done to her beloved lands. And so she gave herself to the sands that she had submerged and the water drained away and the desert was safe again. But the Mother had not forgotten her grief and cried beneath the sands. Her tears rose, bubbling through the sands and became the Great Oases, the only places where life could flourish, for the Mother cared for all the Children of the Desert, even in her grief.

 

But the Great Oases have been disappearing for years now.

 

There are only two left, now, and yours is the strongest, the most plentiful. And so they come for the water and you have no time for love and beauty if you wish to survive.

 

You wonder if that should bother you.

 

You wonder if there is something wrong with you.

 

You do not wonder for long.

 

There may be something wrong with you. You, who have grown in a warzone. You do not know if there is something wrong with you because there is no one to ask; you are alone with the sands of _your_ desert, for all that you live in the Oasis Settlement.

 

You are certain of only this: You are a Child of the Desert.

 

You will always defend it.

 

+

 

And you do.

 

+

 

Until you have been one of the Desert’s for thirty-three years and you bleed to death on the sands, dying slowly from an arrow that’s _just_ nicked your lung – you defend it.

 

+


	3. 0:3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3

Your blood stains the sands of your home under a bright sunrise; sunlight glints on the dunes and you watch as the grains beneath you grow slick and red with blood. You gasp and gasp again because you cannot _breathe_ – but you grew in this desert and are desert to your very bones. You do not think of it as _drowning_. You are choking as you do when you are caught in a sandstorm, unprepared.

 

You remember when you were seven and hadn’t yet learned all the patterns of the winds, of the marks in the dunes and what they meant. You didn’t have a face covering and when the storm started your mouth filled with sand and your throat closed and you had to stumble blind and half-dead until you found a cave.

 

There was a pool of water, bubbling softly and steaming and it seemed to your bleary eyes to be glowing and you drank and drank until you stomach sloshed when you moved and then you took a handful and cleared your eyes. You left the cave and you went home, to your uncle.

 

There were no mountains near your home, yet you found a cave carved from rock regardless.

 

You lived even though you were breathing out sand and then you stumbled home with little more than cuts and a sore throat.

 

You went back to that spot, later.

 

You never found that cave again.

 

+

 

Blood and death and sand.

 

It is a violent place, that desert.

 

It is yours, though.

 

+

 

The blood beneath you stains red and you gasp out desperate breaths that sputter out in a throat that fills with thick liquid. You cannot feel the sun even though it is large and bright and you cannot feel your fingers, though you know that they are clawing at the red sand beneath you.

 

You think back to that cave, and you do not think of the woman you birthed you, who bled to death on the sands from a hard labor that her war-ravaged body could not handle. You think of your uncle and his careful hands fixing your grip on a knife, of how he’d nudge you carefully into position to hold a bow, how he coached you through the motions of draw, notch, release.

 

You think of your Mother, the Mother of the Desert and all who dwell there, and you look at the bright shining sun and how the sand gleams with light and your breath slows and draws to a halt.

 

+

 

Your final thought: _Thank you, Mother._

+

 

You’re warm.

 

You’re warm and you aren’t breathing and you think this is your afterlife, this peace and this calm. You can relax, here, and you do.

 

For all of a moment.

 

Then you realize you can’t feel the ground, that there’s no ground beneath your feet _[do you even have feet?],_ and you are disconnected in a way that is like nothing you’ve ever felt.

 

_[Floating, you are floating, but you have never been submerged in water and the sensation is all too alien.]_

 

You panic and you lash out with a clumsy fist and you strike a warm, ridged wall. You aren’t moving in air, what is this, where _are you_ –

 

There is a muffled sound and you freeze. The dim light goes even darker for a moment and you strain your ears and try to make out something of use.

 

There’s a voice.

 

Female, you think, murmuring something indistinguishable. Her voice is hard and low and reminds you of the Keeper of the Oasis that used to sneak you sweet cactus fruits every so often as a child.

 

You settle a bit without thinking even as you remain on edge. You do not know what is happening; you will have to wait for answers.

 

+

 

The walls around you contract and then you are suffocating, you cannot breathe _[not again]_ and something is happening, what is happening, the walls come down and crush you –

 

Cold air on your face and then you are free and you _scream_.


	4. 0:4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short but it should be the last chapter to transition into A:tLA. Won't be in the series proper for quite awhile but we're out of the sand and fully into the ice now.

It does not take you long to realize what happened. It takes you much longer to come to terms with it.

 

There are stories, in your home. Of those who serve the Mother faithfully, who protect her as best they can. The Mother does not care for them in return for the Mother cares for all her children regardless of what they do for her. Instead, she will take them and shape the sands into bones and the skies into muscle and the desert fruits into skin. She will take the winds and breathe the desert into them and they are born again, able to choose a different path, able to do what they wish.

 

You have been chosen as one of those faithful protectors. You have been born again as a gift.

 

+

 

You are born again to the ice of the glaciers.

 

You hate it.

 

You want warmth and sand and the Mother. You have biting cold and snow and nothing.

 

+

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment before you go!
> 
> -R


End file.
